Lead Nutrition Policy and Engagement Specialist

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS

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ABOUT WFP

The World Food Programme is the world's largest humanitarian organization saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity, for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.

At WFP, people are at the heart of everything we do and the vision of the future WFP workforce is one of diverse, committed, skilled, and high performing teams, selected on merit, operating in a healthy and inclusive work environment, living WFP's values (Integrity, Collaboration, Commitment, Humanity, and Inclusion) and working with partners to save and change the lives of those WFP serves.

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WHY JOIN WFP? 

• WFP is a 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

• WFP offers a highly inclusive, diverse, and multicultural working environment.

• WFP invests in the personal & professional development of its employees through a range of training, accreditation, coaching, mentorship, and other programs as well as through internal mobility opportunities.

• A career path in WFP provides an exciting opportunity to work across the various country, regional and global offices around the world, and with passionate colleagues who work tirelessly to ensure that effective humanitarian assistance reaches millions of people across the globe.

• We offer an attractive compensation package (please refer to the Terms and Conditions section of this vacancy announcement).

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT:

Background

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is one of the leading global institutions helping to measure and alleviate malnutrition. WFP supports national food and health systems across more than 80 countries as they strive to provide access, safely and systematically, to healthy, nutritious diets and reduce micronutrient deficiencies in women, children and the population at large. A key part of this work is the generation of data on food and nutrition security and status, dietary diversity and access to nutritious foods and nutritious diets, including food costs and expenditure, and using these data to highlight where there are risks of insufficiencies, by target group, geography or vulnerability, reflected as hunger (insufficient dietary energy and coping strategies), unaffordability of nutrient-adequate diets, inadequate dietary diversity, risk of inadequate micronutrient intake and likelihood of micronutrient deficiencies. 

When households, and specific household members, are unable to meet their dietary micronutrient needs due to physical, financial or sociological barriers, it becomes necessary to consider additional pathways that can safeguard against micronutrient malnutrition. Large-Scale Food Fortification (LSFF) is a powerful, cost-effective intervention for improving micronutrient intake that can be adapted to many food vehicles and contexts and delivered through different platforms, including both conventional commercial markets and food assistance, including school meals and social protection programs. WFP has long been involved in efforts to expand the scope and impact of LSFF.

Advocacy and decision making about LSFF and other micronutrient intervention programmes and policy, especially about whether, where, what, how and for whom to advocate for and implement such initiatives, require evidence. This includes information on micronutrient deficiencies and dietary intake for different populations, the likelihood that current diets are able to meet the recommended requirements for key vitamins and minerals and current intake of fortifiable foods among specific sub-groups of the population. They also require information about the extent to which different LSFF programmes, programme delivery scenarios, and other micronutrient interventions could assist in filling nutrient intake gaps for key populations. Such evidence is imperative to inform decisions across the LSFF ecosystem, including policy formulation, setting standards and determining whether LSFF is having an impact, in general, and with particular emphasis on those who are most vulnerable, with a focus on gender. However, due to cost, time needed and complexity of primary data collection on vitamin and mineral deficiency (VMD) and dietary intake, there are still many gaps in data needed to quantify the problem, e.g., magnitude and distribution of micronutrient malnutrition and nutrient inadequacy, as well as food consumption patterns within a population, required for proper program design and exploration of new cost-effective vehicles and entry points for fortification. Further, existing data or methods of obtaining data are limited in their ability to describe dimensions of intake inadequacy related to vulnerability in terms of gender, age, geography, biological status and illness.

The WFP specialises in uses innovative data approaches to support governments make informed decisions about the design and effective implementation of food security and nutrition policy and programs, including the integration of nutrition objectives across food systems - to achieve maximum impact. WFP's HungerMapLive is widely-used to inform humanitarian programming and food security situation monitoring. HungerMapLive displays real-time information on food insecurity, nutrition and various relevant drivers using primary data collected using remote monitoring, estimates generated using machine learning-based predictive analytics and publicly available secondary data pulled automatically through APIs. The use of innovative methods to use existing data to estimate or predict the risk of dietary vitamin and mineral deficiencies and the potential of different programs, including LSFF, to fill nutrient gaps can support programme and policy decision-makers from national governments and other stakeholders. This activity brings together the analytical and government technical assistance expertise of the Nutrition and Food Quality Service, and data collection and visualisation experience from the HungerMapLive Team.

About the Team

WFP's Modelling and Mapping risk of Inadequate Micronutrient Intake (MIMI) approach generates and increases access to modeled data on risk of inadequate micronutrient intake at national and sub-national levels, which is critical to advocate for and inform the design and roll-out of large-scale food fortification as well as other micronutrient interventions and complementary programs.

Specifically, MIMI works with academic and policy partners to develop innovative methods for modelling the risk of inadequate dietary micronutrient intake and the extent to which large scale food fortification (LSFF) (of different commodities and fortified according to different specifications) could reduce risk, to inform policy decision-making and advocacy. MIMI's estimated and predictive analytical models use secondary data on food supply, food consumption and expenditure, socioeconomic status and climate, among others, and allow exploration of nutritional vulnerability by geography, gender and socioeconomic characteristics. To date, methods have been validated against dietary consumption and micronutrient status data in three countries. The outputs have been developed into inputs to display on interactive sub-national maps, with the support of WFP's Hunger MapLive Team. Importantly, the team are engaging with stakeholders in each of the focus geographies to support and document the application, validation and uptake of modelled evidence to inform policy and advocacy and document the process. The initiative overall has benefited from WFP in-country presence and partnerships with the relevant academic and civil society partners, among other stakeholders, to promote transparency, provide a forum for discussion, maximise stakeholder involvement at the global-level, incorporate the views of potential end users at the country level and build community acceptance.

Between 2024 and 2026, MIMI will expand evidence generation and stakeholder engagement activities to an additional eight countries and explore the potential of integrating WFP's real-time data monitoring into the modelling and analysis. The advertised position reflects work to be undertaken under this new phase.

PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT:

The Lead Nutrition Policy and Engagement Specialist will play a critical role in the MIMI team, within the WFP Nutrition and Food Quality Service. Under the supervision of the MIMI Team Lead, and working as part of a dynamic, multidisciplinary team of nutritionists, data scientists, policy and advocacy specialists, this position will lead to workstreams concerned with:

• Engaging with country-level stakeholders
• Identifying policy priorities and questions relevant to micronutrient malnutrition and possible micronutrient interventions
• Co-designing user-facing evidence outputs
• Supporting the application of evidence to inform advocacy and decision-making
• Documenting the process of evidence translation for future guidance

Specifically, the position will take on responsibility for leading engagement and representing the team in key countries, working with WFP country offices, partners from government and non-government institutions and team members to identify policy questions and entry points and co-design or co-create analysis and evidence outputs to respond to these. The position will also play a key role in work planned across WFP country offices, Regional Bureaux and Headquarters to support and document policy decision-making or advocacy.  The incumbent will supervise the work of 1-2 other team members contributing to relevant workstreams and the work of collaborating academic partners and/or external consultants (as relevant).   

The successful candidate will bring experience working in or supporting the nutrition and public health evidence, policy and programme landscape in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and a passion for supporting country advocacy and decision-making processes, with the ultimate aim of improving nutrition outcomes. They will have strong and tactful communication skills and a willingness to learn about innovative approaches for filling evidence gaps and contribute to thought leadership about how to apply new indicators and data outputs for positive change.

 ACCOUNTABILITIES/RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Lead the process of engaging with WFP country office staff and other relevant partners and stakeholders in diverse countries to understand the policy context and policy questions
• Lead the process of mapping and exploring data sources and indicators relevant to food consumption, micronutrient status and nutrition and food fortification policy and programmes 
• Supervise the work of 1-2 other team members contributing to the workstreams on stakeholder engagement and evidence translation
• Oversee the development of reports or other relevant documentation to capture outputs from stakeholder engagement
• Participate in or contribute to ongoing country-level stakeholder for a for nutrition, such as technical advisory groups for fortification, as relevant or requested
• Develop approaches to engage with potential evidence 'users' to understand needs and priorities and co-design outputs that would meet their needs and encourage uptake and use of evidence
• Develop outputs to communicate and visualize evidence generated by the team, based on stakeholder requests and user feedback,  
• Lead activities to disseminate and support country stakeholders to review and apply evidence to nutrition policy and programme decision making and advocacy.   
• Prepare for and provide training and other capacity strengthening activities on evidence translation or advocacy, as relevant.
• Develop or contribute to the academic manuscripts for submission to peer-reviewed journals.
• Presentation at academic webinars or conferences, as relevant.
• Lead field missions to focus countries and WFP country offices, as required.
• Lead MIMI evaluation of MIMI 1.0 countries

DELIVERABLES AT THE END OF THE CONTRACT:

• Stakeholder engagement, analysis and advocacy plans developed for 1-3 countries.
• Presentation of methodology and results to diverse stakeholders nationally and internationally.
• Context-specific materials developed to present analytical findings and key messages in 1-3 countries
• Development of plans and materials to support evidence uptake and advocacy for use in 1-3 countries
• Report or other documentation of processes to support evidence uptake and use in 1-3 countries.
• Reports from workshops and training activities, as relevant.
• Development of peer-reviewed articles, topic briefs and other external-facing materials as required to present methodology, analysis and validation of results.
• Development of a MIMI evaluation report and presentation of findings, as relevant

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE REQUIRED:

Education:

Masters degree or higher in Nutrition, Public Health, Public Policy or a related field (with a major in Nutrition).

Experience:

• 5-8 years of successful experience across the international nutrition or public health policy and programme cycle, informing, designing, implementing or evaluating policies and interventions or advocacy.
• Work experience in more than one location or area of work, particularly in LMICs, is desirable.
• Experience engaging and working with both global and LMIC government organisations.
• Experience developing and maintaining professional partnerships and relationships
   

Knowledge & Skills:

• Experience conducting or supporting research to inform policy in nutrition and public health in LMICs, experience conducting qualitative research desirable.
• Experience developing and presenting technical methods and evidence to diverse audiences, including government stakeholders, programme staff and academic partners, in a digestible and context-relevant format.
• Experience supervising the work of small teams or project contributors an advantage.
• Current understanding of the micronutrient data landscape
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively within and contribute positively to diverse, multidisciplinary teams and building and maintaining effective relationships
• Knowledge of nutrition, micronutrients and programme and policy approaches for improving nutritional outcomes.
• Ability to generate or collate data from different sources, understand and translate it into compelling evidence to respond to policy questions and support decision-making or advocacy.
• Excellent communication skills (written and oral) and diplomacy skills.
• Ability to work effectively and communicate with colleagues and stakeholders from different professional and backgrounds.
• Flexibility, sound interpersonal skills and cross-cultural sensitivity.   
• Ability to work effectively within a team but also independently, taking initiative, showing creativity, innovating and leading on new activities. 
• Able to manage relationships and work effectively across different and diverse activities and meet deadlines, delivering quality pieces of work

Languages:

• Advanced professional level of written and spoken English
• Professional knowledge of French an asset.

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REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION

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REMINDERS BEFORE YOU SUBMIT YOUR APPLICATION

• All applications must be submitted exclusively through our online recruitment system. We do not accept CVs or spontaneous applications by email.

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• Additional documents such as passport, recommendation letters, academic certificates, etc. may potentially be requested at a future time

• Only shortlisted candidates will be notified

All employment decisions are made on the basis of organizational needs, job requirements, merit, and individual qualifications. WFP is committed to providing an inclusive work environment free of sexual exploitation and abuse, all forms of discrimination, any kind of harassment, sexual harassment, and abuse of authority. Therefore, all selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

No appointment under any kind of contract will be offered to members of the UN Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), International Civil Service Commission (ICSC), FAO Finance Committee, WFP External Auditor, WFP Audit Committee, Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) and other similar bodies within the United Nations system with oversight responsibilities over WFP, both during their service and within three years of ceasing that service.